Most of us don’t like to get messages that are marked “urgent”. It isn’t usually good news. Sometimes “urgent” comes in the form of a fax, or an email with some item of business that needs to be tended to immediately. Sometimes it is more personal — an urgent phone call that means there is some crisis or emergency. As soon as I hear the word “urgent” I wonder if my life is going to be dramatically changed in a moment by some bad news on the other end. I was having lunch with a friend one day and his beeper went off. He immediately leapt out of the booth and said he needed to make a phone call. One of his children had punched in the code on his beeper for “urgent”. He came back to the table in a few minutes, relieved and angry, only to report that the child was just concerned about getting transportation to a friend’s house — one person’s perspective of urgent very different from another.

There is a sense of urgency that comes with the season of Lent. It seems to me that Jesus must have felt a sense of urgency as he moved about the countryside teaching and preaching about God’s love on his way toward Jerusalem — on the way towards his own death. Jesus knew that there were religious people and roman rulers in Jerusalem who were threatened by his power and authority. He must have felt a sense of urgency to reach as many people as possible, especially people who were hurting, with the message of God’s love on his way towards uncertainty in Jerusalem. Lent is a season to be reminded of this, and to respond to the message in Luke’s gospel to “repent or perish.”

In the scripture reading today, we begin with the story of a tragedy. One of those situations families dread where the urgent message isn’t good news. Some Galileans were killed while worshipping God. We don’t know much about this tragedy and we don’t know why some in the crowd chose to bring it up at this time to Jesus.

Jesus responds to the information by saying out loud the question the people were probably thinking: “Did this tragedy happen because the sins of these people were worse than anyone else in Galilee?”

What about us? What about the students who were killed recently in the California school shootings? Or the baby who dies, and no one really knew why. They call it “crib death.” Were they somehow worse sinners than the rest of us? Jesus' answer to the question is “no”. It seems to me that this must have been somewhat comforting to the families of those Galileans. And it is comforting to us when unexplainable suffering is ours. Sometimes a plane crash just happens. Sometimes the wrong person gets hold of a gun. Sometimes Pilate’s soldiers demonstrated their power as a cruel way of persuading a crowd of people to remain peaceful and obedient. There are some things in life that are beyond explanation.

Just like those in the crowd with Jesus and those family members of the Galileans slaughtered by Pilate, we cry out to the universe, “WHY?” Why did this have to happen? Many of us think that if we can discover why the unexplainable tragedy happened, then we can free ourselves from the fear that we live in a random universe in which all is meaningless accident. If we can discover the reason behind the tragedies, if we can find out why bad things happen to good people, then we have a chance to get in control of things. It is frightening to face the uncertainties of life. We want to be in control. And so we come up with many reasons, any reason that seem to make sense to us to explain why bad things happen.

But Jesus said “no”, we can’t find an explanation for everything and we can’t equate sin and suffering. To understand more about what Jesus meant, we must look at what he said next. It says something to us about how God wishes for us to respond in our tragedies and in our every day living in relationship with God. Jesus said; “But unless you repent [unless you change your ways] you will all perish as they did.” What was he saying?

We can better understand the answer to this question by looking at the parable Jesus tells immediately following these words. Jesus told a parable about a fig tree. “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. So he said to his gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting soil?’ [The gardener] replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

Jesus moves the discussion in a different direction by taking the focus off of the unexplainable answers to sin and suffering and moving the attention on God’s character. We may not be able to explain away the suffering, but we can look to God for what we need.

Jesus wants those who are following him to understand that God’s mercy is ever abundant with us. God is compassionate and patient and allows time for us to be nourished (fertilized!) and to turn our lives around towards God (to repent). Whether in our suffering or in our daily existence, we have the opportunity to repent—to turn towards God in deeper relationship—to be fed and grow closer to God who loves us.

And Jesus goes on to say to us that unless we repent … unless we turn towards this merciful God in relationship … we will perish. Just as the fig tree will perish after some period of time if it doesn’t bear fruit, we, too, will perish if we miss the opportunity to allow God to feed and nurture us in God’s grace.

It seems to me that when we allow sin and suffering to separate us from God, we do indeed perish in our relationship with God and others. To me, the parable says this: God (the gardener) is loving and patient and kind and desires for us to be in loving relationship with God … the kind of relationship that nurtures us to bear fruit and live as kind, loving creatures in the world. When we allow our suffering to become the center of our lives, instead of God, we are “perishing”. We perish in this life when we miss out on full relationship with God.

From time to time we ALL place obstacles in the way of living in close relationship with God. Maybe we have experienced one of those terrible tragedies I talked about earlier in the passage and in our anger, questions and sadness we are unable to turn to God who longs to comfort us. I don’t mean that in our grief we don’t experience anger, questions, and sadness. But do we, over time, allow our suffering to move us away from relationship with God, or do we allow our tragedy to move us closer to God?

When my friend Martie was first diagnosed with leukemia and told she had a 40% chance of survival beyond a year, I watched her go into a time when she was very separated from God. She even said to me, “I can’t pray right now. I’m mad and I just feel alone. I know in my head all the ‘right’ things … that God didn’t give me this illness, that there is no explanation, that God is there, but … I just can’t pray right now. You pray for me.#148;

So, I prayed, along with many others in the faith community. I prayed for her healing. I prayed for her hurt and anger. I prayed that in her pain and grief she would turn towards God who would walk with her. I prayed that I might be an instrument of God’s love to help her find strength and comfort. Over the next two years, as Martie fought for her life against the leukemia, there was much that could have kept her separated from God. But, over time, I watched as through her anger, questions, hurt, and sadness, she “repented”, and over and over again turned towards God, and allowed herself to be moved closer in relationship with God who loved her. Martie eventually died, but she did not perish!

I had my last visit with Martie about two weeks before her death, and there was nothing to indicate at that time that death was that close. As I got ready to leave her apartment, she said something like this, “I’m okay. I’m not afraid to die. It’s okay to let me go.#148; At the time, I made light of her comments, probably because I wasn’t ready to let her go. But I knew as I left that Martie had reached a new level of fulfillment and acceptance in her relationship with God. I knew that in life and in death, Martie was at peace, surrounded by God’s love and mercy. Martie was dying, but she was not perishing! Martie never denied the anger and sadness she felt, but over time, she “repented” … she allowed it to be an opportunity to turn towards God.

We don’t have to be experiencing a tragedy to be separated from God in relationship. More often, for me, it is in the ways I get caught up in my daily busy-ness and forget to turn towards God in closer relationship. It’s when I don’t make time for prayer and study and fellowship with my sacred soul friends that I get separated from God.

Maybe because of my experience with Martie, or maybe just because I am aware that life moves so fast, I have come to believe that it is urgent that we turn towards God who loves us. It doesn’t say anywhere in the scriptures that this message is urgent. Maybe the urgency I feel in Jesus’ words come from the fact that Jesus is moving closer and closer to his own death in Jerusalem and I know his own time on earth to teach and preach and heal is getting shorter and shorter. Maybe the urgency is that Jesus knows what living a life in God’s love is like and he doesn’t want the Galileans to be separated from God’s love for one more minute because of their tragedy.

And maybe the message is urgent for us as well … life is fragile, don’t live one more minute turned away from God’s love in anger, bitterness, busy-ness, laziness or anything else that keeps you separated from God’s love. I imagine God saying something like … “Repent; turn towards me with all that you feel and all that you are as a human and allow my love and mercy to transform your living in new and powerful ways”.

The message IS urgent! Not because God is going to cut us off or forsake us or cause some incredible suffering or tragedy to strike us down. The message is urgent because God loves us and doesn’t want us to live one second separated from the gift of grace. ALL of life is an opportunity to move closer to God in relationship.

There is an urgency in the season of Lent as we are invited to walk with Jesus towards Jerusalem. It is the season when we are reminded repent — to turn closer to God who loves us. How do we move closer to God? We do that in many ways. Some of us move closer to God during Lent by giving something up. Some of us participate in a study group or attend the Wednesday communion service. Some of us share our “fruit” by reaching out in new ways to our children, our parents, our colleagues, our neighbors in need.

Frederick Buechner writes the following about Lent: “During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves. He continues with the questions: When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore? — If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?” To answer these questions can be difficult for us all. To be reminded of our mortality and, even more poignant, of the dissonance between how we live and who we are created to be in this short time here, is very disturbing. But that’s what Lent is for—to disturb, to nudge, to disrupt the life we live just long enough to rediscover the life we want to live and God calls us to live.”

Let us pray. . .